Wish that you were here
by Pearlislove
Summary: A retelling of Abe Portmans life, from birth to death. The families he had, the decisions he made and the guilt he carried. (Second POV)


**A/N: The life and death of Abe Portman. Movie and book verse in combination. No spoilers if you read the books. Lyrics from 'Wish that you were here' by Florence and the Machine**

 _I tried to leave it all behind me_

"We're going to miss you, Abe. Come back and visit soon." Your mother-of-sort bid you goodbye, and you turn your back to her and all her children, your siblings you call them, and walk away. They don't want you to leave them behind, and neither do you, but you know you can't build a life inside a loop the way they've all done. You have need to evolve, to age and change and move forward, instead of being stuck in the same moment a thousand times over, till you lived out all the ways that that moment could be live, and keep living it over and over again anyway.

You can't stay, and so you leave instead, not once daring to look back in fear of releasing all you lost.

 _But I woke up and there they were beside me_

Sometimes you can still wake up in the middle of the night and imagine that you're in your room in the attic of the old house where you used to live. You're not, of course, but in those moments, you can hear it all. You can hear Horace screams as the nightmares take over, Bronwyn's crying as she miss her brother, Fiona's snoring and Miss Peregrine's steps in the hallway, light and clicking like claws on the wooden floorboards as she move from room to room. In her vake screams cease and tears stop flowing, and somewhere in it all she is telling Olive to get back to her own bed. It is all so familiar to you, familiare enough that you can reproduce and recreate every sound, every actions, every word whispered in the dark of night for your inner eye.

With your eyes closed it's all there again, but when you open them, it's gone once more. You never quite figured out if it was supposed to be a blessing or a curse.

 _And I don't believe it but I guess it's true_

Shortly after you got married you went back there, to the Island, and to the loop. You could have written a letter, of course, like you did with everything else, but you wanted to tell them of the wedding face to face, wanted to see the happiness glowing like embers in their eyes and hug Miss Peregrine one more time.

You missed them so much.

Still, just one more time. That's what you told yourself, but you didn't seem to believe it until you got there. In both your and their minds, you could come back any time. It was never to late, you thought.

Only it was. Miss Peregrine loved seeing you back, they all did, but it made things very real. You were aging, but they were not. You were not going to keep saying 'I can come back any time' much longer, unfortunately.

Time had been slipping away from you all and you didn't even notice when it became too late and your easily made promises became easily made lies instead.

Still, coming back had meant you kept your promise, and it made you feel better to know that you came back at all, when you finally realised you would most likely never come back again.

 _Some feelings they can travel too_

The only two who are not smiling when you tell the story of your wedding, is Enoch and Emma. Enoch is still mad at you for leaving all of them behind, and so is Emma, so they gather together, the only two still keeping a grudge towards you.

Them against the world, they way they saw it.

You missed Enoch's bitterness something terrible, though, so you don't mind his angry, intense glares across the room when he thought you didn't see, you just Emma, on the other hand, Emma hurts. You're married now, yet you were never entirely sure you left your feelings for her behind, and it cause it to hurt when you realise how Emma feels towards you.

Not that you blame her.

Before you leave, Enoch drag you aside. He look you straight in the eye and tell you that you made a mistake to come back, and tell you that if you wanted to be there you shouldn't have left.

He tell you not to come back again unless you intend to stay.

You try to pretend it doesn't hurt that he says that, because you didn't deserve him secretly breaking over pain you shouldn't feel, but as soon as you're on the ferry to the mainland, you break down crying. You're slobbings are loud and intense and one of the workers glance at you but you ignore him.

You don't want to abandon them again. You don't want them to feel hurt the way they did when you left the first time all over again.

Yet that's how it always ends.

 _And there it is again, sitting on my chest, makes it hard to catch my breath_

It never leave you alone.

When Gwen, your wife, tells you she's pregnant, there is nothing put pure panic in your head, drowning out the very reality and making you shake uncontrollably, unable to form a proper response to the news from the woman you love. You know why you are so panicked, of course, because your having a baby, and a baby equals a child, and the word child make you think of **them**.

" _Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man. Bake me a cake as fast as you can, pat it and shape it and mark it with "B", and bake it in the oven for baby and me!" Claire's excited little voice reach all the way to the sky and beyond as she repeat the lyrics of the song, excitedly clapping along to the rhythm. It was originally Bronwyn who had promised to play patty cakes with her, but had to back out when she remembered that she was on dinner duty. You had seen Claire sitting alone on the lawn afterwards and felt bad for her, so you offered to play with her instead. It's fun, actually, and you wonder, for just a brief moment, if that's what having a daughter, a_ _ **family**_ _, feels like._

It hurt deep inside you to consider the possibility that in a few years you could have golden-haired Clair or a dark-haired Hugh running around the house, only with other names and eyes. Only they would be other persons completely, but still, the thought is scaring you something extreme whichever way you turn it. And what if they actually are like Claire and Hugh and Bronwyn? What will you do if you find out the monsters want your children's eyes as well? You can't imagine a world where that's the truth.

Yet, it's the path you've chosen, and it's a decision you must live with for the rest of your life. You **wanted** this, a family, a love, a chance to be like everyone else, and that's also what you got.

 _I scramble for the light to change_

When you're sleeping alone, you never turn off the light. You leave it on, it's yellow hue making you feel safe and guiding you to sleep. Tells you that there's nothing to fear they same way Miss Peregrine used to in a time long passed.

You don't want to sleep without it, the light, ever, but especially not if you're all on your own. Funny enough, that's how you mostly find yourself, because the monster haunt you and drive you out of your house and away from your family to chase them down and get a hold of them before they kill someone else. They put a wedge between you and your family, and they create neverending nightmares that only the light of the lamp could chase away, but still you do nothing but pity them.

You pity them for sinking so low, becoming such useless creatures, that there are nothing left to the except destroying what others have. The pity is mostly enough to keep you going, but when it's not, you think of your mother-of-sort and all her children back on the island.

The thought of the monsters getting to them is a source of energy that never stop producing new motivation for you to keep going.

 _You're always on my mind_

'You're always on my mind'. Those are the exact words that end every single letter you send to Miss Peregrine. It's a pleasantry, mostly, but it's also meant as something comforting for them to hold onto when they miss you the most.

It's meant to relive your consciousness so you don't have to feel so incredibly guilty for leaving them all that time ago. It hardly helps, but you figure it's better than nothing, for both of you.

You're always on my mind.

 _And I never minded being on my own_

You've had so many people coming and going in your life, that you never minded the fact that you would always end up alone. You were used to it, figured it's how life looked. You had left two families behind, and gotten a third.

But you didn't know to keep your third family close enough.

You didn't know to keep your wife from kicking you out of bed because you were always gone, and she was sure that you didn't love her anymore.

You should have told her then and there that you'd never love someone else more than her, but the words get stuck in your throat, because somewhere deep inside you recognise your own lie.

From there it got worse. Your family slipped away from you even more, the son and daughter you had not nearly as close to you as you wanted them to be, all because **you** couldn't handle your own guilt when you unconsciously compared them to Claire and Bronwyn and Hugh and Millard. When you expected them, your precious and oh so _different_ children, to be like Claire and Hugh and Millard and Bronwyn. Sussie and Franklin weren't like Claire and Hugh and Millard and Bronwyn.

Your son and daughter would never be like the sisters and brothers you left behind on the Welsh island, but your heart refused for you to stop hoping.

You didn't quite stop comparing them until it was too late and they were adults already and all the damage you had done to your relationship was permanent.

But when they brought Jake into the world they gave you a second chance. They gave you an opportunity to come close to him and love him all the way you never loved your son.

And so you did, all until they day you died.

 _Then something broke in me and I wanted to go home._

The night the hollowgast found you, your last thoughts reached out to them. To the children on the island in Wales who might never get to know of your passing.

You told Jake to go there, of course. You told him to find Emerson, and the bird, and the loop, and you hoped one day he would get there. When he got there, you hoped Jacob would befriend them, like you did once, and that he could become a member of their peculiar little family.

You hoped that through Jacob they would one day find out that you passed, as selfish as that might be, for the thought of them not knowing was more painful than imagine them breaking down when they finally did find out.

 _To be where you are_

You always wanted to be where they were, in the loop on the island, living a peaceful and eternal life on a summer day that never ended. It was not the impression you gave them, not when you got up and left after only a few years, building a life for yourself somewhere else. A normal life, you had told them, was the only thing you wanted, and the one thing the loop couldn't give you.

There had never been a bigger lie.

To leave had been foolish of you, and yet, you went your entire long life before you realised how much of a mistake that you had made. First when you took your very last breath could you see, that life you lived, was not the life you had wanted.

 _But even closer to you, you seem so very far_

The single time you returned, you saw that it was too late. Not only because you were aging and they were not, but because they weren't as close as they had been.

Somehow, through the years, a crack had grown in between you and them. The long time you spent away from the home had reduced it all to magic and amazement in your mind, and somehow you suddenly stopped _believing_ that they were _real_ , and oh how that hurt you when you got there.

When you saw it again, felt it again, tasted it and heard it again, only to realise that it still didn't feel like you were back there, because it glimmered and it glowed like a dream.

The memories had been to precious to you, had been held to high and suddenly reality couldn't compare, couldn't be as good, and you had to stop yourself from pinching your arm to see if you were awake.

It all felt like a dream, and the insight hurt more than losing them ever could. For you had not lost them, more the magic, but yourself. It was you who would never come home, because they weren't _home_ anymore.

The feeling of not really being there even when you _were_ , was just one of the reasons that in the end caused you not to return to the island ever again.

 _And now I'm reaching out with every note I sing_

But even after realising that you'd lost touch with all that made you and the world around you peculiare, you still didn't stop reaching out. You kept replying to every letter, sending photos and drawings and updates. Everything you could think of, you gifted them, telling them that they deserved it.

They never realised that it was your way to apologise for not holding on, and simply thanked you for the gifts you gave them.

You never told them what it really meant.

 _And I hope it gets to you on some pacific wind,_ _Wraps itself around you and whispers in your ear_

You whispered so many words to them, that you never had written down on paper, because they were too fleeting, too quick and too honest to deserve the paper they'd be written on.

These words were screamed out instead, on beaches by the ocean, feet burrowing into the ground as you tried to make the wind and the waves hear your message.

Hoping that if they realised the importance of it, the wind and the ocean would agree carry them along, all the way back through time and space until it reached that one sunny afternoon in 1940, where his friends rested in both body and soul.

All until his sins was finally admitted and they saw him for the monster he was.

 _Tells you that I miss you and I wish that you were here_

You write more letters with those words, especially that one time each year when it's been another year since Victor died, and Miss Peregrine's letter that come to you are crumbled and covered in tear stains.

When you want nothing more than to hold your mother-of sort to your chest and hug her tight until the old woman stopped crying, because none of them could ever take to see her crying.

In those moments you once more reconsider the decisions you'd made, trying to decided if you'd been wrong about what you wanted all along.

 _And if I stay home, I don't know, There'll be so much that I'll have to let go_

You couldn't stay in your own house in Florida, because it never felt like you belonged there, even though that was where your family, your wife and your daughter and you son, were.

you couldn't return to the island in Wales, because that was the place you'd come from and the place you decided you couldn't stay.

You didn't know where you were supposed to be anymore.

 _You're disappearing all the time_

You felt how you were losing yourself. Piece by piece, you disappeared and became someone else. Someone unfamiliar. It scared you to think of, and yet you was powerless to stop it.

 _But I still see you in the light_

When Jacob came you began to come back to life again. The pieces that had disappeared came back, you remembered where they were supposed to be, and you put them back where they belonged.

Jacob put them back where they belonged.

Your grandson became your salvation, and though you were still haunted it was so much easier to handle when you always had his glowing eyes and sorrowless smile in the back of your mind.

He reminded you of what having a family felt like.

 _For you, the shadows fight_

Two years after Jacob was born, Miss Peregrine sent you a letter. It was thick, marked 'urgent' and packed in an unfamiliar sky blue envelope with a loopy handwriting that was not hers on the cover. It's odd appearance made you uncertain and fearful, and at first you didn't want to open it.

By the time you realised how long it had actually been since your mother-of-sort last sent you a letter, almost eight months already, the letter had been sitting on your desk for a week and you immediately grabbed it and ripped it open in one swift motion.

You hoped it wasn't as dire as it seemed.

The letter inside the envelope was long and detailed, paper worn thin from constant rewrites, and it worried you that it looked so unfamiliar compared to the letter Miss Peregrine normally sent you.

When you finally got to reading it, though, it wasn't as dire as you had imagined it to be after all. Miss Peregrine and her children was still safe in their hideout on Cairnholm, the wights and hollowgasts weren't onto them yet, but that relief only lasted for a minute as you continued to read and were met with the real reason behind the odd letter.

Jacob was peculiare. You didn't know how she could possibly know, when she hadn't even met the boy yet, but you trusted her instincts more than anything else. If she told you your grandson was peculiare, then it was probably true. Ymbrynes seemed to have a sixth sense that warned them when there was people with peculiarities nearby, and even though this was extreme, you assumed she must have sensed it somehow. Sensed it and sent him a letter to warn him.

You never figured out why the letter was so different from all the others she wrote, but when you thought back at it, you imagined her sitting in her study with shaking hands and a pile of thick papers, trying to figure out how to break such heavy news to you.

Being a peculiare could be both a blessing and a curse, and now you had to figure out which it would be for Jacob.

 _And it's beautiful but there's that tug in the sight_

It's after Miss Peregrine send her letter that you start with the bedtime stories. You already used to babysit a lot for the two of them, all since he was but a newborn, and now, you offer to do it even more. Instead of reading from the fairytale books like before, you start telling your own stories about the peculiare children on the island where the sun always shun, and of their headmistress, who could turn into a bird at will.

He believe you. You can see it in his eyes, they way he hang on to every word you say like it's the last one your going to say, asking questions and poking and prodding in the subject matter to try and ´get you to tell him every little detail. You tell him all you dare to tell him.

The only thing you don't tell him, is that you're one of them, that you were there with them for a while, and that you left them behind.

Somehow you imagine it would break him more than it breaks you.

 _I must stop time traveling, you're always on my mind_

Jacob is seven years old when he stop believing in your stories. He took the photos and the stories to school, and of course, everyone told them that they were as fake as any other bedtime story grandparents tell their grandchildren.

You knew it was coming, of course, but it hurt you deeply still. You wanted so badly to show him that you weren't a liar like everyone said, that it was all true, but he was too small and it was too early.

You wanted nothing more than to give him a normal upbringing, and at the moment, it meant for him to believe your stories to have been lies, even if it hurted you something extreme.

It's always on your mind

 _We all need something watching over us, be it the falcons, the clouds or the crows_

Sometimes, you imagine the Ymbrynes are still watching over you. Not Miss Peregrine herself, of course, but one of her sisters perhaps. You never met them, but you are convinced there must be Ymbrynes in America too. There was always Ymbrynes where there were peculiares.

There used to be an old lady who'd walk by your house once a week. Always the same woman, always the same time, stopping for exactly five minutes in front of your mailbox before she kept going. Sometimes she had someone with her. Mostly it was a pale, black haired teenage girl with hawk-like eyes and bitter frown who carried a golden-haired toddler on her shoulders.

They reminded you or Enoch and Claire, and it made you feel so terribly homesick that you're not sure _what_ to do because you _know_ that are supposed to be home already.

One day you decide to write it all out in a letter to Miss Peregrine, and by the time her next letter reach you, the old lady and her children hasn't been walking down your street for weeks. In the letter Miss Peregrine sent you, though, there's a picture of them. _Their names are Vanessa, Mina, and Valencia_ , it said on the backside. It's the first time she's told you an Ymbrynes first name instead of surname and it touch you somehow.

That picture sit in the window in your study until the day you die.

 _And then the sea swept in and left us all speechless_

You remember the time Miss Peregrine brought all of you to the mainland for the day. She had told you a week in advance of the planned trip, and everyone had naturally been beyond excited to get to leave the loop, if so only for a day. It had been all you talked about for days, and the suggestions for what you were going to do had been never ending.

The best part of the trip itself, though, had been the boat ride there and back again. Though they were children having lived on an island for the last hundred or so years, the vastness of the sea had awed them all. They had been staring and staring and _staring_ , like they'd never even seen water before, and Claire had asked if it went on _forever_ , and Bronwyn had let the waves splash against her hand.

It had been such pure joy for them all.

The only thing you wanted, when you died, was to go back to that very moment, to be on that ferry and feeling that pure of joy again. A perfect moment, worth repeating in eternity if you could, was what came to him when you took your very last breath. You didn't regret it.

 _Speechless_

You hoped Jacob would be rendered speechless, stunned by unimaginable and unlimited the beauty of the loop and it's inhabitants. You hoped it would take him many minutes of mindless stuttering before he could say a single word, just like you were.

You hoped Alma Peregrine would smile at him and perhaps hug him, and then he'd smile back with all the light of the sun in his eyes because in that woman's presence you always felt like the most important thing in the universe.

You hoped Jacob would be everything you never were to your family on Cairnholm. That maybe, just maybe, he could fill a little part of the hole you so carelessly left behind in their hearts.

You hoped that Jacob would be more deserving of the love of your family then you had ever been.


End file.
